News

We've uploaded a hotfix to NMM tonight that fixes an issue with the Download Manager window going missing for some people. At first we thought it might be limited to a small number of users who had moved their download manager out of sight in previous builds of NMM but it became apparent that this was affecting a large number of people. As this bug was confusing some users who thought we'd removed the download manager completely and just left you with a small download bar at the bottom of NMM we thought releasing a hot fix would be prudent. In the future, if windows or tabs go missing in NMM at any point go to "Tools" then "Reset UI" and you'll go back to the default NMM view and everything will be back to normal.

Sorry for the inconvenience of having to download another build. We internally test every build of NMM we release across multiple different computer setups before we put it live on the site and this bug didn't show on any of our tests. Guess it's good that NMM is still considered as "in Beta"! :)

With the new download system your downloads are balanced across our entire file server network (currently 10 file servers). Non-premium members are capped at a download speed of 1MB/second (8mbit) across all their downloads. If you download 1 file, you'll be able to download at a maximum of 1MB/second. If you download 2 files, you'll download at 500kb/second for each file. 4 downloads would be 250kb/sec per file. And so on and so forth. Premium members are obviously uncapped and will be able to download as fast as their connections allow. We've also added another Premium-only download server in the US for their use.

We’ve made changes to how the Download Manager part of NMM works and also what it shows. Hopefully you’ll find the new columns available within the download manager far more intuitive than before as we’ve done away with the whole “step” system and made it more like a standard download manager. You can now more easily see how your downloads are progressing and how long they’ll take to download at current speeds.

Perhaps the only thing that needs explaining now is the “threads” column. Threads are how many separate download processes NMM is using for each of your downloads. When you download a file NMM splits the file in to smaller chunks to make things easier. It also means if your download fails for any reason NMM can resume from the previous chunk without you having to download all the way from the start of the file again. If you’re a Premium Member NMM can download multiple chunks at once, which works to speed up your file downloads and ensure you’re downloading as fast as your connection allows. If you can only download from a file server at 400kb/sec (because, for example, the file server is physically far away from your location) then downloading a single file with multiple threads will allow you to download at multiples of 400kb/sec, depending on how many threads NMM uses. 4 threads would be 1,600kb/second, for example. For normal members this is always limited to 1 thread. For Premium Members this is set to default at 4, but we’ll give you the choice to lower or raise that amount within NMM soon. And just to note: threads also apply to downloading manually through the site, so if you're a Premium Member who doesn't use NMM, compatible download managers should make use of multiple threads as well.

If you’re wondering why we show you the thread column if you’re a normal member it’s because I like the idea of you at least knowing what Premium Membership can give you. If you can’t afford it or you just don’t want to support the Nexus sites then that’s absolutely fine, but Premium Membership directly funds our work on NMM and the Nexus sites, so the more people I can tempt to become one the better! With that in mind, you’ll now find a new download bar at the bottom of NMM that will show different views depending on whether you’re a Premium Member or not. As previously mentioned, normal members are limited to downloading at a maximum of 1024kb/sec across the Nexus Sites. NMM will now show you how much of your total allowance you are currently using. If the progress bar is in the red, you know you’re using up most of your download speed allowance and Premium Membership might benefit you. If you’re a Premium Member, NMM will show you your total download speed and the percentage progress of your file downloads.

Premium Member or not we’ve worked very hard on not only improving the stability and reliability of downloading through the sites via both mediums (browser and NMM) but we’ve also enabled download manager and pause/resume capabilities for all members. On-top of that, NMM has built in error checking and retry capabilities now. If for whatever reason a file download isn’t working NMM will automatically attempt to retry your download over the course of a minute. If you get any errors now that require you to manually resume a download, or make you unable to download a file at all, it’s probably quite a serious one (like the server being down, or the file being missing for some reason) and will need to be reported.

This update to the site has taken about 10 times longer than we originally estimated it would (we thought it would take 2 weeks, it’s taken 25 weeks...) but we wanted to do it right, and at this point we’re quite happy with what we’ve done. We’ve tried to test it as extensively as possible but we can’t stress test it without putting it live for everyone to use. Our fingers are crossed that nothing major comes up because I know I’m tired of talking about downloads, as are Axel and DuskDweller, and we’re ready to move on to other features that have been waiting a long time due to the delays we’ve had with the downloads. If you do come across any problems please keep us posted in our tracker, but if you’re also noticing an improvement feel free to throw your praise at us in the comments, it’d be good to know we’ve got it right!